Lord Kelvin & The Body Snatchers

Abstract

The primary purpose of this paper is to provoke
controversy, and then a kind of crisis: the intention being to leave a certain
paradox of human behaviour standing all too painfully in need of
explanation and resolution.

The
paradox at issue may be defined as follows: people may sometimes show an
absolute tolerance of inconsistency; we adult humans may show an absolute
indifference to - or obliviousness of - paradoxy itself, sometimes even en
masse. (Nb. By virtue of the means of language not least, outbreaks or
eruptions of this paradoxical condition are potentially communicable.)
The behaviour at issue is intrinsically human: the capacity for it is part and
parcel of our make-up, and it always will be. (Small children, however, do not
manifest such behaviour at all.) But it stands in need of explanation and
resolution nonetheless.

Part 1. The basic
potential for explanation and resolution is alluded to throughout. But the
allusions don't come solely from myself. Indeed, reference is made to a
famously double-edged work of literary art in which a simple, quasi-poetical
technique was deliberately and (strange to tell) none-too-subtly pioneered.

Part 2. A simple,
highly adaptable experiment is described: one involving a sublimely symbolic
yet perfectly everyday celestial issue which has a record that abounds in both
illustrious myth and considerable controversy. And the reader is invited to
enter into the spirit of things by taking whatever opportunities may be
available to conduct a version of the experiment, and to then report the result
in a review of this paper. I expect the general result to demonstrate that,
whatever one's outlook on the experiment, the involved celestial issue's last
major outbreak of controversy - around 400 years ago - has a thoroughly
down-to-Earth dénouement.

Part 3. That
dénouement is shown to involve the enigma of autism, part and parcel of which
is shown to be the very word 'autism' itself. (Eugen Bleuler coined

the
words 'schizophrenia', 'ambivalence' and 'autism' in 1910, 1910-11 and 1912.)
But that said, the spirit of this paper is entirely in accord with the
observation expressed at the very end of Lorna Wing's book TheAutisticSpectrum: sc. that the key to autism is the key to human nature. (Her
actual words: "The key to autism is the key to the nature of human
life.")

Part 1.

This
paper deals with material that is really quite irregular. And if one attempts
prosaically to give detail up front, then one gets caught squarely in a double
bind. Happily, though, I've got a fantastic introduction: a story whose
penultimate paragraph makes express reference to a certain all-too-familiar
paradox of behaviour. And in seeming relation to the basic potential for the
prospective explanation and resolution of that very paradox, an internet search
for the following terms reveals an apparently quasi-theoretical outlook on the
part of the story's author: "Lord Kelvin" plus "The Body Snatchers".
(Using Google, please select "Invasion of the Body Snatchers: A Novel -
Google Books Result".)

Lord
Kelvin is the only real figure mentioned in the story. (Yet note that he gets a
dual mention.) And he was indeed "one of many" to speculate
about panspermia or cosmozoa. But he was certainly the only one to coin the
word 'chirality', with its distinctly human character, in 1894.

Similarly,
"right in the thick of it" (plus "The Body Snatchers") will
take you to the story's opening paragraph: it's the initial illustration of a
simple, quasi-poetical technique.

The
technique's most luminous illustration is in a passage beginning with these
words: "would you mind moving?" A certain duality is pictured:
in effect, there's a thumbnail sketch of the whole human being. And our
language, naturally, is very much part of our being: our species' being.
Indeed our words are like living, speaking fossils. ("Words have a history
and associations, which for those who use them contribute an important part of
the meaning, not least because their effect is unconsciouslyfelt
rather than intellectually apprehended." - W.K.C. Guthrie, The
Greek Philosophers: From Thales to Aristotle, page 4; the emphases are
mine.) [1]

With
the words "a threat new to history", the author appears to allude to
a threat which - notwithstanding its all-too-familiar manifestations and
effects - still remains, in effect, a threat new to history. (The story
was written in the midst of McCarthyism, against the background of the Cold
War; and note incidentally that to be seated at the right hand of the monarch
was traditionally the place of honour for the pre-Revolutionary French
nobility.)

Part 2.

The
following experiment was first conducted in The School of Environmental
Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UK), in November 1999, during a
(30-odd) first-year students' practical lesson on the centrifugal and Coriolis
effects of planetary rotation.

The
students were working in groups of between three and ten, and I approached each
group in turn: I told them I would ask them a simple question, and I pointedly
warned them that I'dbetrying to catch them out!

I
instructed the students to close their eyes, and to respond to the
question I would ask by holding up their right hand for 'yes', left hand for
'no', or both hands (or no hands) for anything else.

Next,
I reminded them that the planets of the solar system orbit the sun, and that
our own planet Earth is rotating axially, once every twenty-four hours.

And
then I asked them: "So, does the sun ever really traverse the sky
above you?"

Once
they had responded manually, they could open their eyes, and look around. And
wherever there was disagreement on display, they were encouraged to argue and
to try to reach agreement.

The
exchanges were captured on tape. And I left the tape with the students'
professor.

The
experimental result came in the form of an email, copied to me by my academic
supervisor, in which he and the students' professor discuss the tape-recording
I'd made. (I was registered at UEA as a part-time, postgraduate student of
philosophy.)

Here
follows the first line of the professor's response to my academic supervisor's
request to borrow the tape, and to his inquiry as to the professor's impression
as to the nature of the exchanges that had taken place - sc. "Did it
seem to you as though the students were disputing with each other about a
matter of fact?": "Yes, you're welcome to the tape. I was very
surprised at how many of the students -- about 80-90% -- were 'tricked' by the
sun question." (The scare quotes are original.)

The
email continues in the same vein of equivocation, or ambivalence, on the part
of both academics - a response unlike that of any of the students. (Also, only
one of the students changed their mind: one from the largest group, all of whom
were female, which had initially responded in alignment with the percentage
figure quoted above.) And I terminated my brief registration at UEA soon after
I received that all-too-successful result. (I still possess the original email
in print-out form.)

Part 3.

A
while later, I encountered Eugen Bleuler's employment of the same sublimely
symbolic issue in his Lehrbuch der Psychiatrie. Here follows the opening
line of the section entitled 'Das autistische Denken' (page 33) - ie. 'Autistic
thinking' (the translation is my own): "Whenever we airily give free rein
to our fantasy - as happens in mythology, in dreams, or in some pathological
states - our thoughts are either unwilling or unable to take notice of reality,
and they follow paths laid out for them by instincts and affects." (Nb.
The words 'autism' and 'autistic' are absent from the 1924 English translation TextbookofPsychiatry, which, taken from the fourth edition of LehrbuchderPsychiatrie, features the jargonesque and distinctly negative
replacements - coined, I believe, by Sigmund Freud - 'dereism' and
'dereistic'.)

Bleuler
goes on to give the following example of mythically oriented autistic thinking
(on page 34): "Thus in mythology, the sun which travels across the sky has
feet or rides in a carriage." Then (on page 35), in the context of the
very same perfectly everyday celestial issue - along with the issues of
"how winter and summer come about, .... how the lightning is flashed, and
a thousand other things which were formerly left to mythology" - he
expressly contrasts such thinking with realistic thinking ("das
Wirklichkeitsdenken").

In
the same section, he gives the following illustration of a form of autistic
thinking that's perfectly benign and edifying (page 34): "[Autistic
thinking] makes the playing boy into a general, the girl with her doll into a
happy mother." And note that the benign autistic thinking that's
characteristic of normal childhood make-believe play is just the kind of
thinking that tends not to develop very much at all in severe cases of
the disorder for which the word 'autism' nowadays tends very widely to be
reserved. (The word was adopted by Leo Kanner in 1943, and by Hans Asperger in
1944.) Note further that of the disorder which he described, versus the mental
disorder of schizophrenia, Hans Asperger speculated - in Die 'Autistischen
Psychopathen' im Kindesalter (page 93): "It could well be that these
two disorders of the will are closely related!"

A
century on from its coinage, the word 'autism' is intrinsically ambivalent
yet also very strongly one-sided. (Nb. Here's a line from TheOxford
English Dictionary entry for the adjectival form of Bleuler's second
coinage - 'ambivalent': "having either or both of two contrary or parallel
values, qualities or meanings.") So that's just like the English words
'man', 'masculine', 'dexterous' and 'right'. Isn't that right?!

Hans
Asperger himself observed (on page 129): "The autistic psychopath is an
extreme variant of masculine intelligence, of masculine character." (The
translation is my own; see below.) He also wrote (on page 84): "The name
'autism', coined by Bleuler, is undoubtedly one of the great linguistic and
conceptual creations of medical nomenclature." (In marked contrast to that
high praise, Asperger is silent on the ersatz forms 'Dereismus' and
'dereistisch' - cf. page 85.)

But
we've already noted that the word 'autism' has a significance that's far more
than merely medical. (Neither myth nor make-believe are intrinsically
pathological; indeed, both may be benign and edifying.) Moreover, just under a
century ago, Bleuler himself wrote a book entitled Autistic-Undisciplined
Thinking in Medicine, and How to Overcome It. But the book has grave
faults. (He was working with a concept that was thus far only half-developed,
which surely didn't help.) For example, the following line appears on the very
first page: "[Autistic thinking] has its own laws, which deviate from
those of realistic logic." But if it has its own laws, then it cannot
properly be called 'undisciplined': ill-disciplined ('schlecht diszipliniert'),
perhaps; but not undisciplined ('undiszipliniert'). (There are of course all
manner of crazy disciplines of thought.) Accordingly, the book itself
appears to manifest a form of ill-disciplined thinking.

Equally,
we can observe just such a form of thinking in the much-cited English
translation of a key sentence written by Asperger (my own translation of which
appears above). Here's the original German sentence (page 129): "Der
autistische Psychopath ist eine Extremvariante der männlichen Intelligenz, des
männlichen Charakters." And here's Professor Uta Frith's wholly one-sided,
quasi-pathologically autistic rendering - cf. Autism and Asperger syndrome
(page 84): "The autistic personality is an extreme variant of male
intelligence."

Frith's
maltranslation appears in Autism And Creativity, by Professor Michael
Fitzgerald. With strangely laboured wording, seeming to suggest the author's
urge to distance himself, Fitzgerald writes (on page 55): "Uta Frith ...
points out that Hans Asperger states that 'the autistic personality is an extreme
variant of male intelligence'." (This is from the same page: "In
autism and Asperger's syndrome we may be dealing with a male form of genius and
creativity." And here's the book's subtitle: Is there a link between
autism in men and exceptional ability?) The book features, amongst others,
several Right-wing politicians. (Most prominently, Adolf Hitler features in
chapter two; and albeit obvious, the author surely should have mentioned - as I
feel the need to mention here - that there is such a thing as evil genius.)
In chapter five, dedicated to Sir Keith Joseph, Fitzgerald writes (on page
153): "Not surprisingly, Joseph was variously described as Mrs Thatcher's
'mentor', 'policy guru', 'Svengali' and 'Rasputin'." And on the same page:
"He certainly enjoyed a special bond with Margaret Thatcher." Also on
the same page: "It is highly probable that his identitycompletely fused
with that of Margaret Thatcher." (There's an excellent picture of the pair
available here:
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/oct/29/national-archives-thatcher-economy-patios
) Famously, it takes two to tango. And if only she hadn't been female, then
perhaps the book might have had an extra chapter! (Hitler's right-hand man,
Heinrich Himmler, might have had one too - as might the latter's deputy in the
Schutzstaffel hierarchy, Reinhard Heydrich.) But for certain inspired satirical
artists of the 1980s, at least, the former PM's female sex was no barrier to
the recognition of the balance of her gender: hence that famously butch,
pin-striped, necktie-wearing, cigar-smoking Spitting Image puppet.

As
for the other side of things, be they perfectly benign and edifying (as in
normal childhood make-believe play, and as in much mythic thinking too) or be
they more or less pathological (as in acute phases of schizophrenia, to take a
strictly medical example), I believe the forms of autism described by Bleuler
(but for simplicity's sake, let's just leave autistic thinking in medicine
aside) might suitably be figuratively described as being left-handed or
back-handed forms.

Conclusion

As
a point of symbolism not least, I don't wish to downplay the significance of
the celestial issue addressed in the experiment described in this paper. But I
don't need to overplay it. Indeed, for present purposes, the truth of
the matter is just irrelevant. For if - when push comes to shove -
people by and large are unable to agree about whether or not the sun rises in
the sky above them each day in the morning, then the most crucial point is
already effulgently illustrated: that evident disagreement would be a fact
standing sorely in need of explanation and resolution. (Nb. For those living
under polar skies, we can for simplicity's sake say that it's as though you
have just one day per year - that one polar day being coincident with the whole
year: your sole proper morning beginning with the first light of polar spring,
and your sole proper evening ending with the last light of polar autumn.)

And
note that the involvement in the experiment of the word 'really', as far as the
truth of the matter addressed is concerned, is also irrelevant. For if the sun
rises in the sky above me each day in the morning, then it reallydoes
rise in the skyabove me each day in the morning! And if in fact really it
don't, then it don't. It's really quite simple.

The
most crucial words at issue are pretty simple, too. But that doesn't mean they aren't
sometimes problematic. Indeed, here are three simple words which might
initially appear quite unproblematic: 'sky', 'skyline' and 'terrestrial'. And
here's a line from The Concise Oxford Dictionary entry for 'earth':
"(or E~) the planet on which we live". That's unlike
'terrestrial', which, unless it occurs at the start of a sentence, is never
spelt with a capital initial letter 'T'. Now, there are plenty of pictures of
Martian skies on the internet; and the skylines there are entirely terrestrial
- they're certainly not marine. But of course, Martian skylines are not
Terrestrial skylines - they're Martian skylines! Also, not all
Terrestrial skylines are terrestrial skylines: they're mostly marine. So we can
see perfectly well that the word 'terrestrial' should sometimes be spelt with a
capital initial letter 'T', even mid-sentence.

Evidently,
then, we humans and our dictionaries need to get our act together before we
might deserve to call ourselves 'space apes'. And that applies, parexcellence,
in the case of the word 'sky'. Dictionary entries for 'sky' tend to have a
quasi-medieval character: eg. "(The vault of) heaven" - The
Concise Oxford Dictionary; "the apparent canopy over our heads" -
ChambersTwentiethCenturyDictionary (we're now in
the 21st century AD, so I've checked Chambers on-line: "the
apparent dome of space in which the Sun, Moon and stars can be seen");
"the apparently dome-shaped expanse extending upwards from the horizon
that is characteristically blue or grey during the day, red in the evening, and
black at night" - CollinsEnglishDictionary. Those
are the opening words, or the opening lines, of the entry for 'sky' in each of
the dictionaries mentioned. And only one of those dictionaries, the last
mentioned, has a suitably modern aspect to its respective entry: the second
line reads, "outer space, as seen from the earth." The associated
word 'skyline' makes it particularly manifest that the concept of a sky necessarily
involves a perspective, real or imagined. (Note that the word 'skyline' is a
fairly recent coinage: its first recorded use is dated 1824.) The sky above me
is my field of view into outer space.

The
stars in the sky at night, we say, wheel across that sky. (Each language
has its characteristic form of corresponding expression: eg. Die Sterne ziehen
über den Himmel.) But note that a quite different perspective - or perhaps I
should sayan apparent perspective - is revealed by a search of the
internet for "the stars appear to rotate".

In
the context in which it occurred that time at UEA, the question 'Does the sun
ever really traverse the sky above you?' is a metaphysical question according
to Wittgenstein's characterisation of such: sc. it's an expression of unclarity
about the appropriate use of words, in the form of a scientific
question. (Actually, my 'appropriate use' stands in place of Wittgenstein's
'grammar'; cf. The Blue And Brown Books, page 35.) But I did after all
pointedly warn the experimental subjects that I'd be trying to catch them out.
(That warning also applied to the two academics involved: the question asked is
a sun-in-the-sky-above-you question, and certainly not a mere 'sun
question'.)

Some
might call the question idiotic. And I wouldn't necessarily disagree with that
judgement. But as already expressed at the beginning of this conclusion, the
main issue here is really not the correct answer to the question - never mind
the legitimacy, or otherwise, of the question itself - but the answer that
people will give to the question when they're put on the spot about it.
(The question has in effect been expressly answered by the following Western
intellectual big cheeses: George Steiner, John Searle, Richard Dawkins, Lord
Meghnad Desai. And from an intellectually oriented newspaper, here follows an
illustration of the same - check the end of the article's second paragraph:
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/books/a-morbid-curiosity-for-beasts/163214.article
) For if it proves to be the case that we cannot even agree over the reality,
or otherwise, of something so perfectly everyday and elementary (or apparently
so), then that would seem to begin to shed light on the extraordinary difficulty
we modern humans sometimes experience in reaching consensus over somewhat more
intellectually challenging and far more obviously significant and weighty
matters - such as, for example, global warming.

Finally,
the dénouement of the change from the Ptolemaic to the Copernican way of
thinking seems to have a significance that's far more than merely human,
Earthly and secular - if, as it appears, the issue of chirality is
fundamentally involved therewith. For I'm sure I can't conceive of any cosmos
at all without effectively conceiving of chirality. And the recent LIGO
demonstrations seem to confirm the veracity of that intuition.

1. (Cf. Part 1.)
Here's a pointedly one-sided illustration: we apprehend - we grasp, seize,
gather, glean, catch on to, get hold of, get to grips with - by hand and
by mind; we talk of manual and mental dexterity, adroit handling and thinking,
brachial and verbal articulation.

On
the other hand, Wittgenstein wrote this: "Perhaps the ineffable, what I
find mysterious and am not able to enunciate, is the background against which
whatever I could enunciate has its meaning." - VermischteBemerkungen,
page 16; the translation is my own. (The book is a posthumously published
collection of miscellaneous remarks; the English translation appears in a
dual-language publication, Culture and Value.) And note that, at least
insofar as the enterprise and creativity of our use of our two hands together
is concerned - especially where one lacks a good, solid grounding for one's
work (such as a good, solid, well-planted work-bench or writing-desk) - it is
of course typically the left human hand which crucially supports, braces
or undergirds (ie. it forms the all-important background to) the work of
our normally more dominant and dexterous right, right?

Showing 1 Reviews

Here follows the result of the experiment described in the above paper's Part 2, exactly transcribed from the email print-out still in my possession.

Dated 29th November 1999, the email was copied to me by R_____ ____, and his appended comments appear within Professor A_____ ______'s reply (details of an invitation to a housewarming party, and the professor's polite refusal, have been omitted):

> >dEAR a_____,
> >COULD I PLEASE BORROW YOUR TAPE-RECORDING OF THE CLASSROOM
> >DISCUSSION FROM WHEN MIKE B. CAME TO YOUR CLASS RECENTLY?
> >THANKS.
> >I would be interested in your opinion of what happened.
> >Were you surprised by the discussion? Did it seem to you as
> >though the students were disputing with each other about a
> >matter of fact?
> >Etc.
> >Best, R_____.
> >p.s. It would be once to meet you. Let me invite you to my ... ...
> >... ...

> Dear R_____
>
> Yes, you're welcome to the tape. I was very surprised at how
> many of the students -- about 80-90% -- were "tricked" by
> the sun question.
>
> I don't quite understand why they so firmly reject the
> "normal" answer, but I begin to think that Mike is right, at
> least in one sense. THey are so beguiled by the intellectual
> argument, so intoxicated by what they know about the turning
> of the Earth, that they don't consider carefully what the
> questioner is asking.
YES, THAT SOUNDS PLAUSIBLE.
> When I tried my oldest son (17) with
> this question, he also answered no, and when I asked why he
> gave an answer other than the obvious one, he said 'this is
> basically an exam question, and in exams the answer to the
> question is never that obvious, so I didn't give the
> "normal" answer'.
THIS SEEMS TO ME AN IMPORTANT POINT: THAT RESPONDENTS ARE
LOOKING FOR A WAY OF RESPONDING WHICH IS 'CLEVER', ARE WARY
OF BEING 'TRICKED' INTO GIVING... THE COMMON SENSE ANSWER!
> ... ...
> ... ... I'll try to come and find you to give you the tape.
GOOD
>
> Cheers, A_____ ______